Well, last night I thought I'd try cooking a beef eye of round "sous vide"
style. This technique, of cooking at a very slow temperature in a plastic
bag immersed in low temperature water appealed" I had previously roasted an
eye of round as suggested by Cooks Illustrated at a very low temp with
excellent success.

I salted the beef 4 hours before starting. The 3 lb piece of beef went into
a Ziplock bag; the air was sucked out thoroughly, and it was placed in a
warm water bath at 140F, first in the microwave on "thaw", and then in the
oven at a low temp, 150F by oven thermometer. The water bath, as far as I
could tell never went above 140F. By plan, I was going to sear the meat
afterwards, rather than before cooking. This can be done either way, the
recipes say.
After three hours, I took the meat out, expecting to sear it. I had a beef
"rock", dry as a bone, and tasteless.

I think one must do this with a very careful attention to an ongoing
temperature just over your final meat temperature. I wanted the meat to cook
to 130F at the center. I couldn't even get my thermometer in to measure it;
it was so hard searing would have been a joke.

In retrospect, I would
1. Sear first at a high temp.
2 Find a way to not ever exceed the planned temperature. Cook at 1
degree over the final temp for many hours, and hold the meat at that temp.
For a final meat temp of 130F, the water temp should have been 131F. That's
far beyond kitchen technology for most of us, for me at least.

As I posted previously, searing an eye of round, and roasting in the oven at
a very low temp, 150F and turning the oven off when the meat temp hit 120F
resulted in excellent results. The meat was moist, with au jus on the plate,
and very tasty, a real poor man's standing rib. I've done this twice with
excellent results. Slice it very thinly.

If any want to try this, here's a very good scientific article on the
subject with recipes. http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html

Ed


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